Background: Disparities of Parkinson's disease (PD) care have not been assessed.
Methods: We examined the medical records of 309 (83%) non-Hispanic White and 65 (17%) non-White Los Angeles veterans with PD from 1998 to 2004 to determine if care quality as measured by 10 PD indicators different by race/ethnicity.
Results: In multivariate modeling, adherence to indicators was higher among non-Hispanic Whites (71% vs. 65%, risk ratio 1.15, 95% CI [1.07-1.32]) compared to non-Whites. Differences in adherence by race/ethnicity were greatest for depression treatment (p<0.05).
Conclusions: We detected disparities in quality of PD care, particularly in depression treatment. Future research should determine causes for these so that interventions can be designed to reduce such disparities.